Dispatches from the Rehearsal Room: Week One on Perseverance Drive

As Perseverance Drive goes into rehearsals this week, Madani Younis, Artistic Director of the Bush and director of the play, is focused on exploring how second generation immigrant children negotiate a sense of self and place.

The first half of Perseverance Drive is set in Barbados where the Gillard family have a home, the second half in Leytonstone where Eli and Grace immigrated to, and where their (now adult) children have grown up.

Madani’s own mum is from Trinidad. ‘She came to London as a nurse, and lived in Wembley’ Madani tells us, ‘as a young nurse in a new city, a new continent, she used to come to Shepherd’s Bush Market to buy her fruit and vegetables’.

‘The cast of Perseverance Drive all bring their own experiences as second or third generation immigrants’ Madani explains. ‘We have only just begun rehearsals but we are already in such a positive, fruitful place, I am looking forward to sharing our progress with you, our Bush audience.’